Diary Of A Busker Day 2600 Tuesday September 23rd 2025 Winchester.
A landmark day; a new “hundred” is about to start and one of only 26 times it’s occurred. Apart from that there are other notables about today. It’s the first time out for the new Faith Venus 12-string acoustic guitar, sold to me a couple of months ago by Rebsie because she doesn’t play it anymore, and just back from Becketts Music Shop in Southampton, where Matthew repaired the faulty jackplug socket in the rear strap button. I’ve just got a Faith gigbag, as well, which just about fits it, as it was obviously made for a 6-string.
There’s a young woman singing to backing tracks at the top spot, The Square is dead, some bloke sitting down with a penny whistle opposite Sainsbury’s so back up the road to the crossroads. Quite an early start for me; 11:30. Makes a change! Coinage is scarce…half an hour in, at midday, Don Lavelle turns up and he’s got the painting that I’m in. I stop playing for a bit to have a look. ‘I’ve got you playing a white guitar Marvin (it’s the Gretsch he’s got me playing; he took a photo ages ago) and you’re wearing a white jacket, blue shirt, shoes (the same as I’m wearing now; rust coloured brogue DMs)…I think that will look better with everything else I’ve got going on. There’ll be a shadow going across you, like this…’ He has yet to do the details in me but the rest of the painting looks pretty much done to me and it looks great. He’s got me sitting down on the steps of The Buttercross – something I’ve never done as I’ve got my stool but he doesn’t want me too far out towards the centre of the painting. He’s also not going to put in the collection gigbag/case and amp so it’s not too cluttered up. Artistic licence. Well, I’d rather be in it without my stuff than my stuff without me!
Don’s pleased I’m here because he can work on the details so it looks like me. ‘I want you sitting down so can you sit down and play? Even though I was the one who said you should stand up!’ I said that was fine, for the purposes of art. I thought the 12-string sounded good although it certainly wasn’t reflected in the coinage…at one point three teenage girls turned up. One said ‘Can I sing something with you?’ I hesitated for a few seconds but relented, probably because I was in a good mood because I’m REALLY about to be immortalised, in a painting. I mean, that wallpaper in the new surgery will be there four, five years tops and then what? They’ll put something else up but this painting will last bloody centuries!
Anyway, the girl doesn’t know what to sing so I suggest Here Comes The Sun because everyone knows it. She gets the words up on her phone, I get the capo on the 7th fret and we’re off. She’s a bit shy so I help her along and she gets into it after a bit. Her two friends film her singing and it’s all very nice although it still doesn’t get any coinage. At the end I give her my card and ask her to send me the video and she can check out all mine on my YouTube channel. After that, I do another half hour then pack up. After an hour and thirty-five minutes, I’ve made the staggering amount of £5. Bollocks to this. I’ll go home, have some grub then come back in with the white Gretsch, which I’ll have to get down from the attic and dust off. Don says he’ll find me wherever I am and set up the painting to carry on with my details.
Result! Back in town The Buttercross is free and Don’s set up at the end of The Pentice chatting to someone; he gets loads of people coming up to chat, which he doesn’t seem to mind. When he sees me set up, he’s impressed – ‘Oh, you’ve got your white Gretsch…and a blue shirt, even!’ ‘That’s right Don, for authenticity, you know.’ In fact, a bit later on, HE impresses ME when he comes up – ‘Is it the thirteenth fret that’s halfway between that bit (he points to the nut) and the bridge, is that the bridge? Or is it the twelfth fret?’ ‘Very good Don, it’s the twelfth fret, here (I point where it is)…that’s the octave and there are two frets either side of the twelfth that don’t have any fret markers, see?’ Well, that’s great if he can actually get the octave neck marking in the right place. I’m well impressed.
Actually, it’s a good job I’m sitting down because after a bit, the strap button screw comes loose at the back and pulls out of the hole and the strap falls away. That would have been embarrassing if I was standing up. I manage an hour and ten minutes which brings the total for today to 3 hours and 15 minutes, which is long enough because my arms are aching and my hands, especially my left, can’t take much more. The coinage was a lot better this time (£13.60) but still not very good. In fact, I packed up when Don did as there was no point in carrying on but at least I was there to pose for him! Before Don put the painting in it’s cover, I took a photo of him holding the painting (which is more or less finished apart from a few touches and he has to put the client in, to the right of me in the centre) and then I took a couple of close-ups of me and I must says it’s brilliant; the whole painting…and it’s definitely me!
‘Looks like we’ll have to get our winter clothes on soon, Marvin’ Don says as he’s about to set off. ‘Yeah, I think you’re right.’ ‘I’ll be working indoors. Last winter I was inside Greens doing a painting and this winter I think I’ll be in the cathedral.’ On one of the upper steps of the monument, I notice a bag of sweets on top of a bit of lined paper full of printing – a child’s writing. ‘I wonder what that is?’ I say to Don, pointing it out. ‘Oh, I’ll clear that away’ he says and before I can say anything, he’s picked up the sweets and paper and chucked it in the bin! ‘Don, that was obviously left by someone for a friend to pick up!’ ‘Oh was it? Oh well.’ After I’d loaded the bike up I had a look in the bin and I could see the paper at the bottom but I’m not going to stick my arm in it and try to retrieve it like some bloody Drongo scraping around the bins for fag butts or anything. But what a shame. I would have liked to have read what was on the paper! Bloody nosey, me. I wonder who the painting’s for. I must find out!